Dear Senator

Dear Senator Franken:

I am a resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I write to ask that you please oppose the re-confirmation of Ben Bernanke for Federal Reserve Chairman. Bernanke has proven he cannot fulfill the Federal Reserve's dual mandate of price stability and full employment and thus has shown he is not qualified to serve a second term as Chairman. He has become a polarizing figure whose past is inextricably entangled with the financial crisis that grips our country.

Your esteemed colleague, Senator Russ Feingold, succinctly explains Bernanke's lack of qualification for the office:

"A chief responsibility of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is to ensure a sound financial system. Under the watch of Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve permitted grossly irresponsible financial activities that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Under Chairman Bernanke's watch predatory mortgage lending flourished, and 'too big to fail' financial giants were permitted to engage in activities that put our nation's economy at risk. And as it responds to the crisis it helped to usher in, the Federal Reserve under Chairman Bernanke's leadership continues to resist appropriate efforts to review that response, how taxpayers' money was being used, and whether it acted appropriately."

In the simple language of a lifelong Minnesotan: we should not give the keys back to the person who crashed the car.

Senator Franken, we need fresh faces and new ideas in government, which is why I supported you in the 2008 election.

Jobs and economic policy are critical issues to my family and to the voters of Minnesota. Please consider my request.

Thank you.

Regards,

<me>

Tip of the hat to Snarf Snarf for the idea.

(My Dreams Have Been) Killed By An Amazon

I thought the point of online retailers is to nurture and exploit one's desire for mindless consumerism! But I've been crushed.

You see, I have been keeping track of a wish list on Amazon.com for a while. I went to daydream upon it at the end of my day, only to find that one of the items on my list has been labeled "item no longer available." I'm pretty sure I don't want "item no longer available." I'm pretty sure I want items, lots of them. That's why I'm keeping a damn list!

Fack. I don't even remember what the item was.

Someone Else's Wisdom

Can't seem to muster any original or insightful or interesting or humorous thought. So I thought I'd post this quote.

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.

H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

Kill or Captcha

After three years of blogging in this space, I've finally had to enable CAPTCHA. I recognize the value of the technology, but I resent having to decipher and enter the letters, and so I long resisted adding it to my site. I suppose I have been lucky enough to escape most spam for all this time. But today I had a number of male enhancement comments on my previous post, and it was time to accept the inevitable. Bastids.

Religion: A Scary Thing, or The Scariest Thing?

Ugandan MP David Bahati has introduced a bill to punish homosexuals with the death penalty. No mention of his religious leanings in that story, but it turns out that Uganda is governed in part by fundamentalist Christians with ties to the American fundamentalist group The Family.

Never let it be said that Christian fundamentalists are less extreme than their Muslim counterparts.

My Dog Knows When I'm Crabby

When I curse under my breath, my dog gets up off the couch and slinks away quietly to his kennel.